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Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Life Goes On

When your parent dies, and you are a parent, wee ones still force you to get out of bed and take them to school.

They still need breakfast and backpacks. (Oh, your dad died.) They still need help finding their shoes/toy/belt/jacket/truck-with-the-blue-trailer-not-that-one-the-other-one-because-I-hate-the-red-one! (Yeah, your dad died.) They still need baths and stories and don’t forget to brush your teeth, please don’t make me tell you one more time. (Um, your dad died.) There are still little kid birthday parties to attend. Like a zombie. Where the other moms who you don’t know very well may or may not be looking at you sideways, wondering if you are still wearing yesterday’s makeup. (Hey, your dad died.) The radio shoots sad songs at you like bullets. Like you accidentally tuned the station to 101 The Dramatic. (P.S. Your dad died.) And you find yourself using the words “bizarre” and “ridiculous” a little (lot) more than normal.

Oh and that meeting with the pre-K principal? The one that took three weeks to schedule, the one for which you meant to fully prepare the five key points you wanted to get across to the person who supervises your son’s less-than-adequate educator? Yeah, that still happens. Even if your dad died.

Though you may have a heightened desire to throw down in that meeting. Because, well...

But all the rest of us? We are still alive. We still have motions; we still go through them.

Isn’t it funny how life is always lived in such parallel paths, no matter what drama is going on in one?

I'm so sorry to hear about your dad and all of the mixed emotions that accompany a loss so complicated. Grief is hard and keeping up with the daily grind becomes so incredibly difficult. Thinking of you.